His type should never be seen again. Born from the dark well of swill and advertising, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was always the apotheosis of politics’ worst tendencies: shallow form, public service for private interest, and, ultimately, the scrap for survival at the expense of the grand vision. Get the vote, keep the seat. Get the party in, forget the intellectual or social picture. Bugger the broader society with a hefty stick, sod the beastly populace, betray your colleagues and everybody else besides: there is only me, Scomo, the man who will reliably fail you at every turn and stab you in the front, given a chance.
In a January 23 Facebook post, Morrison announced his decision to – and here, his priorities are clear – “leave parliament at the end of February to take on new challenges in the global corporate sector and spend more time with my family.” Making the announcement now would “give my party ample time to select a great new candidate who I know will do what’s best for our community and bring fresh energy and commitment to the job.”
This was the sort of thing he should have done months ago, along with a few other former Coalition MPs. Depart, disappear, vanish into history’s chronicles on refuse. But Morrison is fastidious about soiling venerable institutions on his terms. He does not so much dismantle as vandalise them in his own inimitable way. Given the chance, he is likely to head off with his host’s toilet seat.
As a federal member for the seat of Cook, his lack of attention to the burghers must surely have been noted after his electoral defeat in May 2022. Local representation, if taken seriously, is a grind, a series of constituency concerns, attending events and yawning at meetings. It’s hard to tend to such things if you are on the payroll of the Hudson Institute being praised for countering “an increasingly assertive China in the Indo Pacific and beyond” or spending time in Israel praising that state’s execrable efforts in quashing aspirations for Palestinian statehood.
None of this bothers the departing Morrison as being inconsistent. He can still say in his official statement of departure that he was “able to deliver new and upgraded sport and community infrastructure, such as major upgrades to our local surf clubs and new artistic installations and visitor facilities being provided at Cook’s landing site at Kurnell.” And let’s not forget the charity work, the grants programs, and the activities he had a minimal hand in.
That remains Morrison’s talent: greased enough to wriggle out of failure; an opportunist determined to take credit for the successes of others. Take one example. Australia’s attempts to prevent the transmission and spread of COVID-19 during the global pandemic was mostly aided by the variable policies of the country’s states and territories. The Commonwealth merely turned off the tap to visitors and, scandalously, Australian citizens desperate to return to their homeland. Stranded, often impecunious, and left without resources in countries being ravaged by the coronavirus, such citizens were demonised rather than aided.
Morrison’s sole obligation, at that point, was to make sure that vaccines being developed would be made available to the public in due course. Instead of ensuring standard, ready supply when the time came, the rollout, as it was termed, was a stuttering affair. But the then Australian PM had a familiar retort: global supply lines had been “choked”. Again, he wasn’t to blame.
The list of errors and stumbles is extensive, showing varying degrees of callousness and indifference. When parts of Australia were being incinerated by bush fires in the latter part of 2019, he thought it wise to take an unannounced holiday to Hawaii. He was forced to admit “regret” for “any offence caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time.”
Like a walking advertisement of anachronism, he loved the fossil fuel industry with such passion he brought a lump of coal into Parliament to assure fellow lawmakers that they need not fear it. He issued directives that the words “climate change” would not feature in environmental talks Australian diplomats would participate in. He scorned the Pacific Island states for worrying about disappearing under the sea because Australia was not pulling its weight in cutting green-house gas emissions.
As a proponent of cruelty and plain sadism, Morrison’s true Pentecostal spirit was also on show. As immigration minister, he presided over the “turn back the boats” policy of the Abbott government, treating the naval arrival of refugees and asylum seekers as a national security threat. Towing boats out to sea, bribing traffickers to return, and sending broken, traumatised people to such Pacific prison outposts as Manus Island and Nauru, were all cloaked in the secrecy of Operation Sovereign Borders. When the New York Times interviewed Morrison after becoming prime minister, the paper noticed that, “His office features a model migrant boat bearing the proud declaration ‘I Stopped These’.”
His qualifications as a dinner circuit speaker, boring lecturer, tedious advisor, and outrageously paid consultant, are next to nil. But near the universe of zero, the cusp of talent’s infinite absence, opportunities bloom. The corporate entities and think tanks, many keen to ensure the enduring power of the US imperium, will barely notice the man’s colossal ignorance, his cultural insensitivity, his lack of education. What mattered was that he could be Washington’s stalking horse in the Indo Pacific.
Eventually, the member for Cook proved to be more than just that. He would go so far as to sell off Australian sovereignty for a song via the AUKUS security agreement promising nuclear powered submarines, leaving the Australian taxpayer in bondage to Washington for the next half-century. What a triumph that was, and if Samuel Johnson was right in calling patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel, he would have had someone like Morrison in mind: the figure who uses patriotism as a guise for his own scoundrel cunning.
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”The corporate entities and think tanks, many keen to ensure the enduring power of the US imperium, will barely notice the man’s colossal ignorance, his cultural insensitivity, his lack of education. What mattered was that he could be Washington’s stalking horse in the Indo Pacific.”
.
Now to hold the bastard to account for his deliberate policies to ruin the lives of Australian voters with the assistance of the Murdoch Media Monopoly.
Dr. Kampmark,
I am really enjoying reading your thankfully frequent contributions. The AIMN has become a breath of fresh air. I do think despite your criticisms of Morrison, you probably were restrained. I believe he was much worse that even you posit.
Good riddance – don’t bother to come back!
Ping off to the USA where your type are lauded by corporations that love to screw over the ordinary hard working folk of the community.
He’s off to Yank Land to take up a couple of jobs working with Mike Pompousarse…er, Pompeo and some other ex-Trumpty Dumpty’s mob (no doubt RRW) called American Global Strategies, who have this throat gagging and near vomit inducing nightsoil about Scummo:
Has never managed to hold any job for long … eventually his lying, total lack of abilities and knowledge float to the surface much like the scum he is.
So we are left with a Liberal Party so enamoured with a certain type, that it is hard to see a decent leader ever emerging again. Abbott, Morrison and now Dutton are all very similar in the way they have led the Liberal Party and I find it hard to understand how they ever rose to the top. Or in Dutton’s case, what keeps him there
Lyndal, they’re all place holders for a political philosophy that lacks compassion and sense of fairness. Like all fools, they wallow in the past and can’t see past the front of their noses if the topic is anything not related to their own incomes or their own sense of self-importance. The persons will come and go, the philosophy is static.
Foul floating excrement flnds comfy potty in USA with old turdminder Pompeo…may he suppurate, Morrison sour sauce. But, Morrison the mangey maggot was followed by dudder Dutton, a low level nematode of no known quality of intellect, heart, soul, conscience or outlook, totally negatively geared to mediocrity. From Jack Howard the Foul Flea to Peter Duckwit-Futton is a journey in biographical conservative evil.
I wonder given he, Trump, Biden (sorry Joe) Cameron and the rest, if the system has not been devised over decades to put inept brainwashed ratbags in charge and then they get on with their various forms of gouging to their hearts content uninterrupted.
Yeah, Binoy!
Thanks GL. Ha ha ha haaaar ….. ‘Non-executive Vice Chairman’, just the sinecure Scummo has always aspired to.
But can he resist meddling, as is his want, in the personnel minutia with his knives and hatchets? They won’t tolerate his obsessive behavior.
He’ll likely believe he can thrive in that dark swill-pit as the Oz Jabber the Hutt until some honey-trap consort seeks to usurp Jenny.
Hasta la vista
Allegations of quid pro quo of new defence related positions and creating the AUKUS sub contract; win win……
Faint hope springs from the heart…. but somehow I don’t think Bill Hicks is Morrison’s kind of guy. Scummo’s into sycophants, not critics.
Bill Hicks on Marketing and Advertising
You forgot to mention RoboDebt.
Also hardly surprising that he is going to work for a bunch of Trump acolytes. Such a shame that he and his devil spawn are not permanently moving to Trumpland.
His like should never have been seen in the first place.
Pity he didn’t announce it this coming Friday – then there would have been real justifiication for not changing the date.
Any chance Scummo can find a few niche appointments for some of his mates? Please put in a good word for Brother Stewy, and maybe lure Angus and The screeching harridan to the US by promising to put in a good word in Donald’s little pink ear. If Trump wins there will be lucrative jobs available for the whole LNP except for Bridget Archer. I could see the NRA would be a good fit for Petey. Yes please take some of the rubbish with your. Good riddance.
Caz,
I can think of one niche where he can fit in, his ashes in a small ceramic urn marked “Here rests Scummo Morriscum, thank fuck he’s gone.”
Pete Petrass,
You mean that thing where Morrison initiated a scam that used patently dodgy maths to generate false debts against swathes of citizens who were aggressively pursued with complete contempt for presumption of innocence, thus hounding numerous Australian citizens into condition of suicidal despair?
Yeah, Robodebt is probably worth mentioning.
What depresses me most is knowing that in 2019 my fellow Australians preferred this deranged creep to Bill Shorten as PM. That scar runs deep. The only blessing (pun intended) is that the damage Sideshow Scott inflicted on his own party may well be terminal. Huzzah! https://pazzoredento.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/scott-morrison-pm-burning-down-the-house/
Morrison went to Hawaii within 48 hours of being trapped in a Pitt Street building because smoke from bushfires had stopped operation of the lifts on the day that the airport was closed and the harbour ferries were cancelled. I walked past that building around lunchtime and was informed by the people massed on the footpath that the PM was in the building. No wonder the timing of his departure on holiday was kept hidden from the Australian people.
Further to my niche comment: Not long after posting that I remembered a line from the recorded Bottom Live 2001: An Arse Oddity stage performance by Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall, where Richie discovers a tombstone placed by Eddie (which I think is superior than my comment).
‘THE FAT TWAT IS DEAD. HOORAY, PISS HERE’
Good one GL.
Reminds me of the lines Byron wrote on hearing of the death of Lord Castlereagh;
Posterity will ne’er survey a nobler grave than this.
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh,
Stop, traveller, and piss.
And yes, that’s the same brute after whom so many streets and landmarks are named here in Australia.
Message for Senator Janet Rice
Dear Senator Janet Rice,
I am a jobseeker robbed by Services Australia. Last September I asked for your help and provided you with a report of another illegal debt scheme. I only received an automated email confirmation from your office.
In case it’s unclear, I repeat again. Services Australia sent me a review decision made by an anonymous ‘delegate or authorised officer”, not an authorised review officer ARO (required by law). They used a fake review to force me into significant debts.
Senator Janet Rice, I need a formal letter from your office.
For the curious, Grace Tame’s review of Morrison’s book, Plans for Your Good. IMHO, as far as book reviews go, it’s a ripper.
Oh we will soooooo miss him!
About his first call in the good old USA was fior a photo op with former President, convicted felon Trump.
What a man.